Rick Taubold's Blog, page 10

Marketing basics for indie authors

From Rick: For the next two posts, we’re going to talking about marketing. Next week, author Jordan Ring will be doing a guest post to share his thoughts and experiences on marketing and promotion, along with some good advice and tips. A while back I ran across a piece of advice to writers that said, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Dealing with immortal characters in fiction

From Rick: Immortal characters can be interesting and challenging for a writer to deal with in fiction. Anytime a writer decides to put an immortal character into his fiction, a number of problems and challenges will confront him. The biggest one is that if the character is truly immortal, he (or she) cannot die or […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Business advice for indie authors

From Rick: As we enter a new year, I felt it appropriate to pass along some advice. Followers of this blog know that I place a lot of confidence in Kris Rusch’s blog and always find it more than worthy of following. Keep in mind, though, that she speaks from the perspective of writing as […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Putting sex and sex scenes in your story

From Rick: First off, this is not an R-rated post. I’m not going to be discussing anything explicit, just giving advice on when—and if—you should include sex or references to sex in your story or novel. This is also going to be a short post, though I may follow it up later. The first question […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Writer vs. computer–Part 2

From Rick: In part 1 I talked about keeping backups, perhaps the single best solution to many of the computer problems a writer can face. Not only will this help you recover from computer hardware disasters, but it can help you when something else goes wrong. What if you accidentally click “don’t save” when closing […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

No post this week & schedule for next 2 months

From Rick: Starting this week and until the end of January, I will be posting every other week. This is to give me some time to catch up on other projects. The posting schedule will be 12/4/2017 12/18/2017 1/1/2018 1/15/2018 1/29/2018 Starting February 5, weekly posts will resume. –Rick

Writer vs. computer–Part 1

From Rick: While this blog is mostly about writing and things related thereto, this post is not an article on the basic types of story conflict: man vs. self, man vs. man vs. society, etc., although man vs. machine is one of them. No, it’s not that. We do talk from time to time about […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Avoiding info dumps

From Rick: This week I figured I’d change things up a bit and get away from the doom and gloom about publishing challenges, although I don’t think those challenges will be going away anytime soon. The best advice I can give is that you ensure what you’re writing is the best it can be to […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

The harsh realities of book publishing—Part 2

From Rick: In response to last week’s post, I received a comment from one of my writer friends who did go with a smaller traditional publisher. He said that I failed to mention things like the costs associated with self-publishing, specifically the editing, cover design, printing, and marketing, including blog tours, cover release, and tons […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

The harsh realities of traditional book publishing

From Rick: Most of what the people believe about having your book published and the success of published authors is false. (1) A published author makes a lot of money. (2) A publisher will give you a substantial advance on your book. (3) Your published book will be in bookstores. (4) An agent will always […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...